Atalanta as Model: The Hunter and the Hunted

1996 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith M. Barringer

Atalanta, devotee of Artemis and defiant of men and marriage, was a popular figure in ancient literature and art. Although scholars have thoroughly investigated the literary evidence concerning Atalanta, the material record has received less scrutiny. This article explores the written and visual evidence, primarily vase painting, of three Atalanta myths: the Calydonian boar hunt, her wrestling match with Peleus, and Atalanta's footrace, in the context of rites of passage in ancient Greece. The three myths can be read as male and female rites of passage: the hunt, athletics, and a combination of prenuptial footrace and initiatory hunt. Atalanta plays both male and female initiatory roles in each myth: Atalanta is not only a girl facing marriage, but she is also a female hunter and female ephebe. She is the embodiment of ambiguity and liminality. Atalanta's status as outsider and as paradoxical female is sometimes expressed visually by her appearance as Amazon or maenad or a combination of the two. Her blending of gender roles in myth offers insight into Greek ideas of social roles, gender constructs, and male perceptions of femininity. Erotic aspects of the myths of the Calydonian boar hunt and the footrace, and possibly also her wrestling match with Peleus, emphasize Atalanta as the object of male desire. Atalanta challenges men in a man's world and therefore presents a threat, but she is erotically charged and subject to male influence and dominance.

This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real artificial intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed, and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing prehistory of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerged alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI’s social, ethical, and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphization, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 138-141
Author(s):  
Jennifer Currin-McCulloch

Drawing from Van Gennep and Caffee’s conceptualization of liminality, this autoethnographic narrative portrays the author’s rites of passage into academia and through the death of her father. These fundamental developmental transitions and losses emerged concomitantly within the backdrop of a pandemic, further cloaking the world in grief and disequilibrium. Incorporating the voice of the personal as professional, the author portrays her existential struggles in relinquishing her cherished role as a palliative care social worker and living through her dad’s final months during a time of restricted social interaction. Interwoven throughout the narrative appear stories of strife, hope, grief, and professional epiphanies of purpose and insider privilege. The paper embraces both personal and professional conflicts and provides insight into the ways in which the unique setting of a pandemic can provide clarity for navigating the liminal states of separation, transition, and incorporation.


Author(s):  
Svetlana E. Malykh

The article analyzes the ceramic imports found on the territory of the Meroitic Kingdom – the southern neighbour of Egypt, which existed on the territory of modern Sudan since the second half of the 6th century B.C. until the middle of the 4th century A.D. The imported pottery revealed in the process of archaeological excavations of necropoleis, residential and temple complexes are mainly of Mediterranean origin and are associated with the Hellenistic world that later became a part of the Roman Empire. The finds are mostly rare and are represented by fragments of amphorae from various regions of Italy, Aegean region, Asia Minor, the Levant, northern Africa, as well as the European provinces of the Roman Empire – Baetika and Gaul. The main consumer of foreign goods, in small numbers reaching the middle and upper reaches of the Nile, was probably the Meroitic elite. It is logical to assume that the penetration of Mediterranean ceramics into Meroe was facilitated by the trade ties of its northern neighbour – Egypt:trade with the Mediterranean took place through Egyptian river and caravan routes; although hypothetically, one cannot exclude the possibility of goods entering Meroe bypassing Egypt, through the Red Sea ports. Despite a small share of imported products in the Meroitic Kingdom and regardless of the ways of their movement, they had a significant influence on the local pottery manufacturing; a reflection of this process was the appearance in the African kingdom of Hellenistic forms of vessels (kraters, askoses, lekythoi, clepsydras, etc.) and vase painting in the Greek style. As a result, a very special synthesis of artistic ideas emerged, embodied in Meroitic ceramics. Along with the local Nubian features, Egyptian and Hellenistic themes, techniques and ceramic forms are recognized there, which are characteristic for the pottery of Late and Ptolemaic Egypt, ancient Greece and Rome and allows us to see the Kingdom of Meroe as the extreme southern outpost of the Hellenistic world.


2012 ◽  
Vol 57 (S20) ◽  
pp. 97-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magaly Rodríguez García

SummaryThis article analyses the debate on trafficking and policies to combat the recruitment of persons for commercial sex within the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children of the League of Nations. Its main argument is that the Committee's governmental and non-governmental representatives engaged in what might be called a “moral recruitment of women”. This form of recruitment had a double purpose: to protect females from prostitution through the provision of “good employment”, and to repress intermediaries of prostitution by means of criminalization. Three elements of the Committee's internal debates and concrete actions will receive special attention. Firstly, the ideological framework (feminism, social purity, humanitarianism, abolitionism, regulationism, and/or class); secondly, the gender dynamics (differences of opinion between the Committee's male and female representatives); and thirdly the degree of gendering (construction or reinforcement of gender roles and relations).


2011 ◽  
pp. P1-308-P1-308
Author(s):  
David H Abbott ◽  
Amber K Edwards ◽  
Andrew T Beine ◽  
Daniel A Dumesic ◽  
Steve Jacoris ◽  
...  

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0247964
Author(s):  
Andrea T. Morehouse ◽  
Anne E. Loosen ◽  
Tabitha A. Graves ◽  
Mark S. Boyce

Several species of bears are known to rub deliberately against trees and other objects, but little is known about why bears rub. Patterns in rubbing behavior of male and female brown bears (Ursus arctos) suggest that scent marking via rubbing functions to communicate among potential mates or competitors. Using DNA from bear hairs collected from rub objects in southwestern Alberta from 2011–2014 and existing DNA datasets from Montana and southeastern British Columbia, we determined sex and individual identity of each bear detected. Using these data, we completed a parentage analysis. From the parentage analysis and detection data, we determined the number of offspring, mates, unique rub objects where an individual was detected, and sampling occasions during which an individual was detected for each brown bear identified through our sampling methods. Using a Poisson regression, we found a positive relationship between bear rubbing behavior and reproductive success; both male and female bears with a greater number of mates and a greater number of offspring were detected at more rub objects and during more occasions. Our results suggest a fitness component to bear rubbing, indicate that rubbing is adaptive, and provide insight into a poorly understood behaviour.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alla Packevich

The monograph, on the one hand, examines the period of development of the descending cycle of evolution and the associated progressive changes that show the irreversibility of the processes of formation of the planetary system. The end of one cycle and the beginning of another leads to the transformation of the system of life and the expansion of consciousness at a new energy level. On the other hand, the questions of potential opportunities for the development of the ascending phase of evolution, which goes both along the path of complexity of the organization and along the path of diversity, are considered. In the ascending evolutionary stream, what has been differentiated into the corresponding levels in the descending cycle is brought together and thus prepared to enter into new, more perfect forms of unity. It is shown that the development of humanity along its entire path depends on the interaction of energies of various forms and potentials. Understanding the relationships between different types of energy and their use provides insight into many important issues in the evolution of society. The material introduces the modern features of the existence of the male and female sexes from the energy point of view. The idea of a way out of the current conflict situation that has arisen between the sexes at the present stage of evolution is proposed. It will be useful for those interested in the problems of scientific knowledge, architects, philosophers,historians, physicists and methodologists of science, students and students of secondary schools.


Author(s):  
Tracy A. Thomas

This chapter addresses Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s feminist views on maternal custody and parenting. She advocated granting legal rights of child custody to mothers in the event of separation or divorce. Stanton challenged the separate spheres ideology and argued for women to work in paid employment as well as to have pecuniary and social power in the home. To bring about this transformation of gender roles, Stanton articulated feminist parenting ideals of reconstructing gender by raising the next generation of boys and girls in equal moral, educational, and social ways. She took this message to the populace in speeches on the Lyceum tour over eleven years. Ultimately, as this chapter concludes, Stanton argued that religious doctrine must be reformed in order to transform the gendered social roles of women and men, as she articulated in the feminist theology of her Woman’s Bible.


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